I'm always baffled when I hear theists make the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), where they argue that naturalistic evolution would make our beliefs fit for survival, and not for truth, but somehow think that with god's guidance our brains were designed for truth. Below I have a list of some of the biases that affects virtually every human being taken from Michael Shermer's book, The Believing Brain. So the challenge to theists who hold to the EAAN is this: if god guided our evolution so that our brains would hold beliefs that are true, why do we have so many psychological biases that prevent us from the truth that appear to be the product of that very evolutionary process?
Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirming evidence.
Hindsight bias: the tendency to reconstruct the past to fit with present knowledge.
Self-justification bias: the tendency to rationalize decisions after the fact to convince ourselves that what we did was the best thing we could have done.
Attribution bias: the tendency to attribute different causes for our own beliefs and actions than that of others.
- Situational attribution bias: we identify the cause of someone's belief or behavior to the environment.
- Dispositional attribution bias: we identify the cause of someone's belief or behavior in the person as an enduring personal trait.